TGIF: 2.0 weblogs to begin this Friday...
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Google and that DoubleClick deal news
Nearly lost in the news about the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's approval on Thursday of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick was another action by the agency: the publication of a proposed set of privacy principles governing online behavioral advertising.
The release of the privacy principles is an important and welcome step, said Peter Swire, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and a law professor at Ohio State University. Although some privacy groups blasted the FTC for approving Google's DoubleClick deal, the acquisition has helped place focus on the entire online advertising industry's privacy practices, Swire said.
"It's good that the FTC is shining a spotlight on this industry," Swire said Friday. "Online advertising is in its second boom. They're trying lots of new techniques; some of those techniques have privacy problems."
The FTC hosted a workshop on behavioral advertising and privacy in November. The agency's proposed privacy principles, a series of "self-regulatory" steps the FTC is recommending for online advertisers, come in part from that workshop.
Among the FTC's proposals:
Thursday, December 20, 2007
No Double Take on DoubleClick
The merger between Google and DoubleClick cleared a major regulatory hurdle Thursday when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted not to block the acquisition.
In a four to one vote, the commission ruled that the merger "is unlikely to substantially lessen competition" in the online advertising market.
Google announced in April that it would purchase online ad provider DoubleClick for $3.1 
Critics of the merger are worried about the vast amount of data to which Google will have access should the DoubleClick deal be approved. The search engine stores information on user queries, IP addresses and cookie details for approximately 18 to 24 months. With the addition of DoubleClick, Google will potentially have access to information about the activity of users across hundreds of Web sites.
The FTC did not see this as problematic. "The customer and competitor information that DoubleClick collects currently belongs to publishers, not DoubleClick," according to the ruling. "Restrictions in DoubleClick's contracts with its customers, which those customers insisted on, protect that information from disclosure, and we understand that Google has committed to the sanctity of those contracts."
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Viacom & Microsoft team up against, The Google!
Viacom (VIAB - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) and Microsoft (MSFT - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr) have teamed up in a five-year content and ad deal in their latest effort to fend off the online ad juggernaut Google (GOOG - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr).
The financial terms of the agreement, announced Wednesday, were not disclosed, but the companies said the deal has a projected base value of $500 million over the first five years. It includes revenue sharing, guarantees and content licensing deals, and the companies have the ability to expand the pact in the future.
The partnership amounts to the latest effort by content and technology companies to make money with premium content and advertising on the Internet, where nearly everyone is bleeding market share to Google.
Virus gaga for google ads!
The antivirus company has identified the threat as Trojan.Qhost.WU which modifies the infected computer's host file, a local storage for domain name/IP address mappings.
The infected machine's browser then reads advertisements from a server at the replacement address rather than from Google.
Spectrum shootout: Paul Allen vs. Google
Paul Allen, the billionaire Microsoft co-founder, will bid against Google for a spectrum license that could be used to roll-out a wireless broadband network across the United States.
Mr Allen and Google join 94 other bidders so far approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the regulator that is running an auction for a portion of the US airwaves expected to raise as much as $15 billion, documents show.
Other deep-pocketed bid backers include Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican telecom mogul whose personal fortune was put at $59 billion earlier this year by Fortune, making him the world’s richest man – just ahead of Microsoft’s other co-founder Bill Gates.
However, the most intense competition is likely to come from US mobile incumbents such as AT&T and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Britain’s Vodafone Group. Both groups face being toppled from their dominant positions in the US mobile industry should they be outbid.
The radio spectrum being sold off by the FCC is situated around the 700MHz band, an asset described as the “Mayfair and Park Lane” of the airwaves.
Made available as television goes digital, it can travel long distances and penetrate walls easily. Crucially it has the potential to become, alongside cable and telephone lines, a wireless “third broadband pipe” – a mobile internet network that would boast speeds comparable to current conventional broadband services.
Mr Allen has applied to bid in the FCC auction, which is scheduled to begin on January 24, through his investment vehicle, Vulcan Spectrum.
A noted philanthropist and collector of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, he co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975 and is now the fifth-richest man in the United States, with a personal fortune estimated at $18 billion by Forbes.
He also heads an investment company called Vulcan Capital and is also a majority shareholder in Charter Communications, the US cable operator.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Google Vs. Microsoft
A CEREBRAL computer-scientist-turned-executive, Eric E. Schmidt has spent much of his career competing uphill against Microsoft, quietly watching it outflank, outmaneuver or simply outgun most of its rivals.
At Sun Microsystems, where he was chief technology officer, Mr. Schmidt looked on as Scott G. McNealy, the company’s chairman, railed against Microsoft and its leaders, Steven A. Ballmer and Bill Gates, as...
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